The present invention relates to a process for making a dental restoration and the resultant apparatus. More particularly, the present invention relates to a process for attaching a decal to a resultant dental appliance for creating a dental restoration having desired color and characteristics similar in appearance to natural teeth and/or oral tissue.
Dental restorations, in general, are fabricated to replicate the natural anatomical appearance in the oral cavity. This fabrication process is highly dependent on the artistic abilities of dental technicians. This dependence creates a difficulty among dental laboratory owners and dentists to produce consistent quality for patients. The reason for this difficulty lies in the fact that there are relatively few dental technicians that have the artistic ability or experience to artistically perform dental restorations to a level necessary to achieve high aesthetic results. This creates a high demand for experienced dental technicians and correspondingly drives up costs as there are few dental technicians with the requisite experience. Such high costs make it difficult for laboratories to stay competitive in a global market.
A current dental restoration trend is to use veneers, which are a thinner, more conservative tooth restoration. These restorations are applied with the dentist removing little or no natural tooth structure. The sacrifice for this type of restoration is that, while the natural tooth stays relatively intact, the thin structure of the veneer provides little to no room for the laboratories to create the natural aesthetics that are achieved using three dimensional color and structures. Many patients do not understand the anatomy of a tooth and do not understand the importance of these structures in making smiles appear natural. Most dentists understand the importance of preserving the natural tooth for the purpose of maintaining sound structure. For this reason, some dentists may choose to make any necessary changes using minimally invasive dentistry. But, dentists are forced to use these thin veneers because of mass marketing to the public. Some dentists provide these restorations only to meet patient demand. The present invention endeavors to allow dentists to continue offering these conservative restorations without sacrificing the natural appearance of the restored tooth.
Thus, there is a need in the art for a process for making a dental restoration, and resultant apparatus, having desired color and characteristics similar to the natural oral cavity of which is applicable to crowns, bridges, ceramic restorations, resin, denture teeth, veneers, pre-fabricated matrixes, pre-cured resins and composites, and any other kind of restorative dental appliance. The present invention fulfills these needs and provides further related advantages.